Turner drew on his considerable experience as a marine painter and the brilliance of his technique as a watercolorist to create this view, in which the foundations of the palaces of Venice merge into the waters of the lagoon by means of delicate reflections. He based the composition on a rather slight pencil drawing made during his first trip to Venice, in 1819, but the painting is really the outcome of his second visit, in 1833. He exhibited this canvas to wide acclaim at the Royal Academy, London, in 1835.

Turner made three trips to Venice, in the late summers of 1819, 1833, and 1840, and the present painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1835, must have been painted upon his return from his second visit, presumably using his own drawings and watercolors as source materials. Critical commentary was extensive and mostly favorable, and when its first owner, Munro of Novar, sold it in 1860, John Ruskin Senior proposed to Gambart that twenty gentlemen should be found who would contribute to the purchase price so that, "as Turner is so little known and so little esteemed on the Continent," the work could be presented to the Louvre.

Among the pencil drawings in the 1819 Milan-to-Venice sketchbook in the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain, London, there are two that could perhaps have been used as aides-mémoire. The first (Finberg no. CLXXV, fol. 54), quite detailed and showing the church of Santa Maria della Salute from the opposite direction, was made from the other side of the Grand Canal. The second (Finberg no. CLXXV, fol. 67a), slighter, must have been drawn from a boat and illustrates the mouth of the canal, with palaces in front of the bell tower of San Marco to the left and the Dogana, or customs house, to the right. There is a related watercolor, from either 1833 or 1840, at the Tate (Finberg no. CCCXVII b 23) and another, of about 1840, in the British Museum (1958,0712.443).

The painting was engraved twice, in 1838 by William Miller and in 1850 by Robert Brandard. Both prints include Turner’s initials on a plank at the lower left, but these are not found on the painting and as far as is known were never there. John Ruskin owned an example of Miller’s engraving and greatly admired it, mentioning it often in his writings.

The title, Turner’s own, is not an accurate description of his subject. Longhena’s Baroque church of Santa Maria della Salute does not have a porch, and no view of Venice from the church resembles this one, which is a bird’s-eye view taken from a height above the Grand Canal that can only be imagined. There are discrepancies of scale and topographical detail, all of which represent choices made by a skilled draftsman who could have shown exactly what he had seen had he wished to do so. Turner brings the wealth of his experience as a marine painter and the brilliance of his technique as a watercolorist to the problem of merging the foundations of the palaces of Venice into the waters of the lagoon with its delicate reflections.

John Ruskin. Letter to his father, John Ruskin Sr. September 11, 1851 [see Ref. Cook and Wedderburn 1903–12, vol. 10, 1904], as "Munro's picture"; observes that his lodgings in Venice are "just 'out' of the picture on the left-hand side of it".

Art-Journal (1857) [see sale cat. 1860], as "so much admired, that it occasioned . . . a succession of pictures of this renowned city"; "the vessels in the canal have 'dressed ship,' and are therefore hung with their gayest colours".

John Ruskin. Catalogue of the Turner Sketches in the National Gallery, Part I. 1857 [see Ref. Cook and Wedderburn 1903–12, vol. 13, 1904].

John Ruskin Sr. Letter to Ernest Gambart. April 26, 1860 [see Ref. Maas 1975], proposes finding twenty gentlemen to subscribe with him towards buying it to present to the Louvre, "as Turner is so little known and so little esteemed on the Continent".

Walter Thornbury. The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. London, 1862, vol. 1, pp. 232, 326; vol. 2, pp. 380, 399, 406, states that "Turner went to Venice for Mr. Munro, insisting on his travelling expenses being paid," and that Munro commissioned a drawing; Turner returned with this "large ambitious painting, which Mr. Munro never much took to"; notes that Turner "was greatly mortified at seeing Mr. Munro's disappointment, and would not at first sell him the picture, but at last consented".

John Ruskin. Notes on Mr. Ruskin's Own Handiwork Illustrative of Turner. 1878 [see Ref. Cook and Wedderburn 1903–12, vol. 13, 1904], calls it "a challenge to Canaletto, being nothing else than Turner's adaptation of the great Louvre picture of the 'Church of the Salute'" and observes that Turner "threw his whole strength into the boats and water, which Canaletto could not paint"; states that "there is no better representation of Turner's work by line engraving" than Miller's print.

W. Cosmo Monkhouse. The Turner Gallery: A Series of One Hundred and Twenty Engravings from the Works of the Late J. M. W. Turner, R.A. New York, [1879?], unpaginated, ill. (Brandard engraving).

Lindsay Stainton. Turner's Venice. New York, 1985, p. 32, observes that "Turner exaggerates the width of the Grand Canal in the foreground and wrongly makes it seem to become narrower towards its entrance".